I found a mermaid

amid the glamour

I am quite surprised to come across a mermaid! I haven’t seen one before. She’s sitting on a rocky island, naked, at 7am, looking straight ahead. It must be her hour of worship. Her altar appears to be on the horizon. There’s no cross or gold star but a smooth, honey-orange ball of sun. Mermaid looks earthy, doesn’t care for bling, less is more, as far as she is concerned. Her tail is invisible. It must be just tucked out of sight. I think she loves the glamour of this hour though, as much as I do. 

A sequin sea comes to life before us. The sun opens its arms wide and shimmies a catwalk all the way from where the Mediterranean Sea is five kilometres deep to where I stand. The shimmying light moves in liquid ovals in a murmuration that even the starlings approve of. 

Mermaid is sitting on a manmade island of rocks in front of the beach. It has a flat cement top. It could be a modern sundial. Huge angular stones that encircle it are still in silhouette. The island was originally built to break the waves to save the sand but now everyone knows it means much more than that. It’s a favourite spot for yogis, the cormorants, seagulls, fishermen, worriers, mermaids and sun worshippers, in that order. This rock circle is a roofless temple and it promotes the right to be nude too, especially when the sun is only knee high to the horizon.

Mermaid keeps things simple, as mermaids do. Her clothes lie in a heap to one side. She sits on the ground. For sure it’s still cool from the night air although this summer a hint of the heat from the previous day sleeps over and lingers in everything you touch. 

It’s obvious that mermaid has come here to sunbathe in peace. She probably would prefer it if I didn’t exist. I almost feel sorry for her that I do. I admire her lack of inhibition, her earthiness not to mention the perfect tan! I love too this town for allowing her the right to sunbathe nude without making a fuss. Mermaid is bold, I don’t think she’d be too worried about any rule book anyway. Why should she be? She could always flip back into the sea if there was a need to hide! Anyway, it’s too early for the crowds. Blessed with voluptuous soft curves her huggable form could be a model for Botero, or a four-hundred-year-old piece by Peter Rubens called ‘Woman before the Sun’ with a cheeky tattooed buttock and a tiny, pierced tummy button twist?

I remove my shoes and stroll away, along the beach with my back to her, letting her sunbathe in peace in her own skin. My back says, don’t mind me, this beach is yours as much as mine. We both made the effort to crawl out of bed early on a day off, or before work, or who knows, anyway, both of us deserve this reward of dawn, alone with the waves and their mesmerising sequins. Her wish shall be granted. At least, by me.

I walk through the water and the sea is warm as I knew it would be, but still cool enough at daybreak to be delicious. I stop and watch the water’s surface while the shingle of broken shells wriggles and tingles under my feet. It tries to escape between my toes back to the sea as fast as it can, faster even than it arrived. Maybe that’s an illusion, I never was any good at physics.

These perfect summery waves hardly reach above my ankle, but they roll up the beach with a loud enough voice to be heard by all the dogwalkers on the promenade, the joggers avoiding the midday burn, the birds, my pulse and my soul. We might all be utterly different people and ages here, but the waves are still the narrator of all our thoughts and in that way, we are all one.

I splash my way down through lines of shingle, past breaking waves and with a deep breath I dip into the cool. I look down. The water is clear and dark, distorted and spooky, green seaweed and rocks below make a scene from another world that I know too little about. Tiny fish race off ahead, rushing away from me in case I am cruel. Minutes later I walk back out of the sea.  Wet. Refreshed. Salty. Cooled. Smiling with a healthy appetite for breakfast. Hair all clumped like an amateur’s attempt at dreadlocks but ready to greet another hot day ahead. 

What do we love about the beach the most? Is it the coolness of the water on our skin or is it the massage of shifting sand? Waves bless us with a salty cure for the skin and soul alike. Sticky sand fades in importance. The beat of the waves is undoubtedly hypnotic. Waves rush at you full of energy and hope. They set an example, they aren’t shy and they give it all they’ve got. But the sound of the sea must be the most cherished. Each wave is a line of prose, from the ancient tale of the sea’s love story with the moon.

We can hear the earth’s heartbeat in the waves. We leave the beach and we are rewired. We are earthed. Today this is not an angry sea. I can’t help but think that it’s a pity the waves and their magnificent bubbles don’t linger for longer, but they do preserve a magic, by not overstaying their welcome. Of course, we are lucky to know, as most of us learned as a young child, they keep coming back again and again. Maybe that’s why we love the beach, it awakens the playful child in us somehow. 

Thank goodness.

honey orange ball of sun @naturetorque

the glamour of sunrise @naturetorque